There has been a growing trend of young people leaving rural areas and moving to urban centers, a trend that has raised concern in small towns of a future without a younger generation to take the reins of business and culture. The future of our forests are also affected by this emigration.

Nearly 70% of forests in western Massachusetts are privately owned by families, a statistic that remains steady throughout much of the country east of the Mississippi. According to a recent study by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, funded by the US Forest Service, 17% of the 251 million acres of family forests in the US (about 42 million acres) will be passed on to the offspring of the forest owners in the next five years.

In two states where research was conducted, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, 90% and 85% respectively of the offspring of forest owners do not live on the family forestland, and over 70% in each state don’t even live close to it. Like many younger generations in rural areas, these offspring have left the area for other things and are now largely uninvolved in the management of the family forests. This can have great implications on the future of forests in the east. Previous research has demonstrated that some landowners have been concerned about the lack of interest their offspring have shown in keeping the family forestland in the family. As more offspring leave the family land, it’s not a leap to expect interest in the land to wane as their connection to it loosens. And when an uninterested, uninvolved child of a landowner inherits the family land, the chance that the land will be divided and sold increases, and with it increases the potential loss and fragmentation of our forests.

The Pinchot Institute study was based on the premise that in order to better protect our family forests, it is important to get to know the offspring who will eventually be responsible for the forests. What they found was that all offspring are not the same. Gender can influence current involvement and the desire for future involvement in the forestland. Women were well behind (by about 20%) men in their current involvement in their families’ forests and tended to also fall behind their male counterparts in the desire to be involved in their land if not already so. With the rising costs of healthcare, however, both men and women were equally concerned about the potential for medical expenses to force them to sell their land.

The Pinchot Institute also discovered that siblings often disagree on factors that could significantly influence decision-making in the future, including the desire to be involved in forest management, their understanding of how the land will be transferred to them (joint ownership, divided ownership, etc.), whether they desire to make an income off the land, and what would force them to sell the forest. The study also identified some of the values held by family forest offspring, finding that offspring donated money most often to their church, and lastly to environmental and forest organizations. These are important findings for those who want to reach out to family forest offspring and mobilize them to manage and protect their forests.

The important lesson in this study is that it is important to know who the next generation of forest owners will be, and who will choose to pass on that mantle after inheriting it and why. Knowing what issues are important to the next generation can help conservationists, policy makers, and family members proactively address the issue of property transfer while the possibility of discussion and good planning is still an option. Most important is for family forest owners to know that, in many cases, a combination of no planning and offspring who are only loosely connected to the family forest leaves our forests in a tenuous position.

For the full details of the Pinchot Institute study, please visit http://www.pinchot.org/pubs and click Download PDF under “Pinchot Letter Fall 2008”.